- Welfare for the future

Nordic cooperation minister Heidi Grande Røys wants to put a strong emphasize on developing a welfare system with sustainability for the future. – This is especially important to us in the Nordic countries, as we do have a high level of welfare. Our countries are always on the top level in welfare rankings, and it will be of vital importance that we manage to recondition and adjust to changes in society to be able to keep the welfare systems that we already have. And maybe even more important; to develop our society to be able to adjust as needs and challenges change, e.g. as the proportion of elderly people in the population steadily rises, the minister of cooperation says.

The second main priority for the Norwegian chairmanship is the cooperation in the Northern regions and the challenges this embodies, especially on environmental issues like oil and gas exploration and the peculiar fauna in the arctic areas. Cooperation on the management of the fishery resources is an important area as well. The third focus area is to develop a continuous knowledge development, e.g. to meet the challenges presented by the ongoing globalization.

- We want to actively make use of the existing arenas for cooperation. The Arctic Council, the Barents Sea Council and the Baltic Sea Council in addition to the Nordic Council of Ministers, says Ms Grande Røys.

Reconditioning - It is only natural that our ministry has been given the task of coordinating Nordic cooperation. Vital for the development of our welfare societies is the ability to continuously reform and recondition the system. Before the end of the year, a large Nordic research project studying how welfare tasks have been solved in the Nordic countries will be presented. It will be exciting to see the results, since things have been done a little differently from country to country. I hope the researchers will provide us with more knowledge and insight, especially in how different welfare systems in fact are functioning. My view is that politics as far as possible should be based on knowledge.

Youth involvement - We will also strive to get young people involved. It is assumed by many that today's youth is almost exclusively preoccupied with themselves and to a very small extent with the society in which they live. OK, if that is true, we have to ask what the consequences might be for the Nordic welfare model. However, I am not too sure that this is correct, and I think we should try to find out if it is. Hence, we are going to put together a Nordic youth panel in order to shed some light on how today's youth look at Nordic cooperation and the issues on which we are focusing; the Northern areas, knowledge development and the future of the Nordic welfare model - how they look at their everyday life and their future, concludes Minister of cooperation Heidi Grande Røys.